William L. Bade 35 min read

To the men of the far future, today's scientific dreams look as quaint as the medieval quest for the Holy Grail.

William L. Bade's 1951 story wakes Maitland to an intruder in the moonlit dark and a jolt that flings him, and the reader, across time to a future that regards our ambitions with baffled pity. Thoughtful social SF about the mutability of what a civilization values. Read it for a sharp golden-age meditation on how strange our proudest goals may one day seem.

In its time

Published in 1951, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

35 min read (a novelette, room for a turn or two).

Illustrated by

Lawrence Woromay